Rainbow
by Gackt Camui
Summary: [SM/WK] [SchuldichxUsagi . . .sorta. . .] Schuldich reflects on his morose childhood and watches a girl obliviously skip in rain puddles.


_Disclaimer: I neither own Weiss Kreuz nor Sailormoon._

**Rainbow**

Rain. 

Grey rain blurred his perfect vision. The dim streets eloquently hazed and misted into a land of dank, cold grey. 

He hated the rain. 

He flicked his cigarette once and brought it to his lips. The cooling embers flared to an ephemeral life, sputtered with fraught wisps of smoke, and died in the douse of damp rain. 

Inhale. 

Its noxious fumes coursed through his lungs. Sickened blood cells pumped restlessly through his heart and crept through pulsing, slick cylinders to his brain. The ailing tumor greedily relished his poisoned blood and grew, a little bit by a little bit, everyday. 

Exhale.

He was shut in cold, wet streets. Slate sheets of rain slid down around him and he was again in the musty cells of his absent childhood, where a child's body heat produced barely enough warmth to keep him alive. It was where children formed shivering lumps around him as he himself huddled in his far and defensive corner. It was where children lived in fear of each other and themselves. They were cold cells where heartless eyes followed their every movement. 

And while he had been trapped between confining grey walls, he had wondered how such cold, blank eyes that regarded him so inhumanely could belong to a human. 

Let those cruel eyes slide over me, he had whispered in his head. Let those pitiless eyes pass by me to another. 

And sometimes they would, but when they wouldn't, the torture was ten times as great. The beatings increased and the shocks augmented until his body would smoke like the cigarette he held carelessly between his fingers. The bloody welts on his sensitive skin would burn with the most intense of white-hot pain before he would become numb. 

Sometimes he welcomed the pain because the pain was no one's but his own. In those endless moments, the world would close up around him and he could only feel and think for himself; there was no one else and no other thoughts to crowd his ill mind. There was only pain—his pain. 

Then he would return to the chilly cell where only hollow eyes that belonged to hollow bodies surrounded him. 

But they never had hollow minds. They were suffocating and hungry and empty all at the same time. They had yearned within him and made him yearn for things he never had and never experienced. Emotions and sensations had welled up in him, crying like broken children—like himself—for the gentle touch of a mother he never had and the strength of an imaginary father's grip. They always had memories in their minds; he always had their memories in his mind. 

He was free now, but those memories stayed with him like the nightmares of his death. They were a part of him and he welcomed them as much as he welcomed his demise. The tumor was getting worse and worse, and often, he would forget where he was or what he was doing. Often, he would collapse with insufferable pain. 

He wondered if he would die in his own home. Perhaps he would forget where he was going and he would walk into an oncoming car. He wondered if Crawford would see his death. Maybe his telepathic abilities would carry on into Hell. Satan would be an amusing individual to manipulate—imagine knowing the shrewd and cunning thoughts behind the fallen angel himself. 

He smirked and took another satisfying drag as his eyes drifted between expanses of constantly shifting grey to settle on a brazen splash of pink and white. A girl no more than fifteen hopped in and out of reflective and murky puddles in a juvenile dance. She twirled, long golden pigtails that had once been concealed behind a pale pink plastic hood twirling along with her. She held an immaculate white umbrella gracefully in one hand as her cherry boots licked hungrily at the dirty rainwater. 

It was ridiculous—a grown girl prancing around in puddles in the middle of the day. 

He envied her. 

She still lived in her childhood and even as passing strangers cast her queer looks, she frolicked like a five-year old, unbeknownst to them and their dismissive judgments. 

He tasted her thoughts and they were nothing but simple and honey sweet bliss. They were unpretentious and guileless. She thought of nothing aside from the gentle rapping of water against her umbrella or the way the beads of grey water pearls glimmered as she kicked them up. 

His mind grazed hers again and he nearly sighed in ecstasy from the complicated but uncluttered mess that was her mind. She was a junior high student with a mother, a father, and a younger brat of a brother. She had a handsome boyfriend who attended Azabu Technical Institute. She was also the infamous heroine of Japan. She held the weight of the world on her narrow shoulders and she was at peace with her responsibility. 

He almost laughed out loud at the revelation—this girl, the Messiah of Light! He hesitated and continued to stand casually under the sheltering entryway of the apartment building, surveying her. She twirled again. He dropped the cigarette onto the street and ground his heel into the smoking remains. It died a cold, wet death. 

He strolled towards her, hands lodged comfortably in his pockets, scarcely dodging a spray of rainwater to his puritan white slacks. He stopped a little ways from her, drenched in rain. 

"Yo," he unceremoniously greeted. She turned to him, stopping in mid-splash, and he was startled at the strange and vivid blue of her eyes. 

"Hi," she returned with a curious smile. Her open gaze swept over him and suddenly, she stepped up the few paces between them and offered him her umbrella. 

He smirked, waving it away, but she was persistent. She shifted the cane of her umbrella up and held it above his head. At a loss, he conceded and took the umbrella and sheltered the both of them from the pelting rain. They stood side by side and looked out into the slick streets. 

The ambiance was cool and relaxed between them. "Do you like the rain?" he inquired. 

"Mm, no, not really. I hate thunder," she answered quietly with a nervous smile. 

"Then why are you out here in the rain?" 

"Why are you?" 

He smirked with amusement. "I asked first." 

She gave an exaggerated sigh and raised her lucid eyes to his. "The weatherman said there would be showers today before the sun came out." 

"So?" 

"So," she drew out, wrinkling her button nose at him like she was annoyed that he didn't know, "when the sun comes out, there will be a rainbow." 

He blinked langurously. He had known, but it was still a surprise to hear her say it. He was rarely surprised. 

"So?" she said, and he couldn't help but admire the way her exquisite pink mouth formed around the word. 

"So what?" 

She laughed. "Why are you out here?" 

"Thinking," he replied with a shrug that implied he didn't want to be questioned further into it. He would have used the term 'reminiscing,' but 'reminiscing' sounded like a word reserved for pleasant memories. 

She didn't notice, and if she did, she was very good at ignoring it. "Thinking about what?" 

"Life." 

"Life," she echoed boldly. "Life is good, isn't it?" 

Her words were so unadulterated, he wondered for a second if maybe he had mistakened her previous thoughts for a passerby's. But he skimmed his consciousness against hers again and it was the same. He didn't understand, and perhaps couldn't understand, how a girl who had suffered such the way she had, could still say, unflinchingly, that 'life is good' without lying through her teeth. 

As far as he knew, life wasn't all that good, but he would continue to live because that was all that he could do until he died. Either way, it didn't matter. 

"What do you mean?" 

Her head inclined to the side. "What do you mean, 'what do you mean'?" 

"How is life good?" 

Her eyes widened and they flashed with excitement and enthusiasm. "There are lots of reasons! There's so much to do in life that no one could possibly do everything in one lifetime. There's so much to learn and experience, and to feel, of course! There are so many things I haven't done and so many foods I haven't tasted!" 

"Food?" he laughed, drinking in her eagerness. It was contagious. 

She scrunched up her face at being teased. "Well, other things, too. Like sky-diving! I'd like to sky-dive one day, just to show Rei that I am not a scaredy cat!" she exclaimed, crossing her arms over her chest. 

"And if you've already done all of that—then what?" 

She sighed as if she were speaking to a skeptical child who no longer believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. "We'll invent new things! Don't you think this world is wonderful? The sun will always chase the moon, the stars will always shine in the sky, and the world will keep spinning so we'll always have fall, winter, spring, and summer. See, we'll always be able to watch the sun set and rise, watch the stars at night, and go swimming in the ocean when it's hot." 

"The world is deteriorating. There won't be much of a world left in the next few centuries." 

"That's not true." 

"How can you be so sure?" 

"I'll make sure of it." 

Her resolute announcement made him look twice at her. Her determination was admirable, but he was not a person who was so willingly persuaded. The heavy gust of wind hauled a flood of rain against them. 

"And you'll make sure that no one else will ever be hurt again in this whole world?" he whispered darkly, not sure what he meant. His emerald eyes slanted down to meet her sober blue ones. She looked thoughtful and tormented. 

"No," she whispered honestly. "I don't think I could do that, but I'll try my best. I wouldn't want anyone to get hurt." 

And he glimpsed her perfect utopian society through her eyes as it shattered like a precious glass dream around her. He watched her fall from grace, only to rise up again, piecing together her ambition with the most precise and gentle of ways until it was as perfect as it once was. 

Was this her vision of the future or was this the future? It calmed him and instilled a sense of hope within him. 

Hope, he snorted. Hope for what? 

"It stopped." 

He looked up and the sky was no longer ashen. Faded blue invaded the stormy clouds, chased them away. The sun glared brightly with renewed spirit after its short nap. He raised his free hand to shield his eyes. 

"Look!" she exclaimed, cheerful and bright like the sun, pointing towards an area of blue sky and sunshine. 

He followed the direction of her finger and smirked in slothful awe. An unspoiled rainbow curved in the sky, gentle and vibrantly transparent. 

"It's breathtaking, isn't it?" she whispered reverently, eyes still glued to its bent layer of colors. 

He inhaled deeply, the air cool and crisp, smelling like wet concrete and sunshine. "Yes. Yes, it is." 

Perhaps he didn't hate rain so much.

_AN: Okay, weird, vague, and contradicting, yeah, yeah, I know. Lol. ^^ Well, I sorta needed a break from figuring out the next scene to Fear Me, so I wrote this. It was inspired partly by Tenshi no Nozomi's "Sepia and Gray" and "Like a Lullaby" series (which are totally awesome. I bow down to her magnificence. @_@) and this really old purely SM fanfic I read a long time ago. It was about Haruka watching Usagi play in the rain--introspective, I think._

_I didn't use their names because. . .I honestly don't know why. It just didn't seem like it would be appropriate, I guess, heheheh._

_Anyways, a lot of Schuldich's personality is taken from a detailed manga/CD drama explanation of his history from a website. He was tortured and abused in Rosenkruz where the doctors were trying to figure out what went on behind telepaths and other people with extraordinary powers._

_Yeah, I know it's not a real romance and I did mention she had a boyfriend already, but who knows? Use your imagination. :D_

_ Tell me what you honestly think about it. Don't worry, I won't bite. ^_^_

_And for those who wonder why I spelled "gray" wrong, I didn't. Grey is a variation of gray and this spelling seems to fit the mood of the story more. Grey looks more grey than gray, if you know what I mean. ^_^_


End file.
